TDMR Europe celebrates World Arthritis Day

Posted On: 12th October 2019

World Arthritis Day (WAD) is a global awareness-raising day on 12 October.

For this year’s World Arthritis Day, scheduled for 12 October, EULAR’s ‘Don’t Delay, Connect Today’ campaign with the theme ‘Time2Work’ aims to dispel misconceptions about rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases (RMDs) and shows how employers can best support people who live and work with the conditions.

EULAR, the European League Against Rheumatism, aims to highlight the importance of employer support for people with rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases. Weight loss and weight management programmes, such as those advocated by TDMR Europe, can play a vital role in helping those with rheumatic diseases, osteoarthritis in particular, to get back to work.

With early diagnosis and proper treatment, people living with rheumatic and musculoskeletal diseases (RMDs) worldwide can contribute fully as members of the workforce throughout long careers.

Formula diet TDR programmes can deliver in a short period of time the amounts of weight loss needed to achieve major improvement in osteoarthritis with an increasing body of evidence for successful weight maintenance afterwards, and as such offer the overweight person with knee osteoarthritis an opportunity to have an improved quality of life. TDMR Chairman, Professor Anthony Leeds said ‘I have seen individuals with osteoarthritis return to work after losing 10kg or so in weight. High quality research evidence shows that weight loss reduces inflammatory drive and the pain in osteoarthritis is related to inflammation in joint membranes. I believe that we should be much more aggressive in helping overweight people with arthritis to lose enough weight to make a difference. It makes economic sense too: getting people back into work enhances personal dignity but should also reduce healthcare and other costs.’

The European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) is the organisation which represents the people with arthritis/rheumatism, health professionals (HPR) and scientific societies of rheumatology of all the European nations. The aims of EULAR are to reduce the burden of rheumatic diseases on the individual and society and to improve the treatment, prevention and rehabilitation of musculoskeletal diseases. See: https://www.eular.org/eular_mission.cfm

TDMR Europe is the European trade body for manufacturers and distributors of formula diet products, including total diet replacement products (TDRs) and meal replacement products (MRPs) which provide weight loss and weight management programmes for the overweight and obese.